Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events unfolds through a sequence of essays that explore why gatherings matter, what they make possible, and how purposeful events can shape relationships, identity, trust, and action.
Rather than offering a single linear argument, the book moves through interwoven reflections, stories, examples, and practical ideas. Each essay stands on its own, but together they build a larger view: that gatherings are not peripheral to human life or organizational life. They are one of the primary ways people come to know one another, remember what matters, and move forward together.
Taken together, these essays argue for a broader understanding of events: not as background activity, but as one of the most human and consequential tools we have for creating connection, alignment, and change.
Acts of Humanity
The opening section begins at the most fundamental level: human beings are relational. We do not simply exchange information or occupy the same space. We gather to affirm identity, create meaning, test belonging, and make life visible to one another. These essays explore the human roots of gathering and the deeper reasons events matter in the first place.
- Essay 1.1 | Acts of Humanity — Begins with the haunting emptiness of Grand Central during COVID and asks what is missing when the people are gone.
- Essay 1.2 | Kairos Moments — Explores the difference between ordinary time and the moments that divide life into before and after.
- Essay 1.3 | Traditions & Rituals — Looks at the strange and powerful way rituals turn a crowd into a “we.”
- Essay 1.4 | Hearts, Heads, and Hands — Argues that the best gatherings do more than inform; they move people emotionally, intellectually, and behaviorally.
- Essay 1.5 | Stories: Uniquely Human — Considers how stories give meaning to objects, moments, and experiences that would otherwise remain ordinary.
Sculpting Relationships
Relationships do not emerge from intention alone. They are shaped over time through repeated contact, shared experience, and moments that create trust, memory, and mutual recognition. This section examines how gatherings strengthen, repair, deepen, and reveal relationships—between individuals, within organizations, and across communities.
- Essay 2.1 | Hosting — Reframes hosting as a deeply human act of care, not simply a matter of logistics.
- Essay 2.2 | Advocating — Examines what it means to have someone in your corner, especially when you are not in the room yourself.
- Essay 2.3 | Participating — Looks at the difference between attendance and participation, and the moment a room stops watching and starts joining.
- Essay 2.4 | Fans — Explores the beautiful intensity of fandom, where liking becomes identity and identity becomes community.
Gaining Perspective
Purposeful events do more than bring people together. They help people see differently. They offer altitude, clarity, contrast, and context. This section explores the role gatherings play in shaping perspective—how they help us understand where we are, what matters now, and what kind of future we are trying to build together.
- Essay 3.1 | Broaden Your Perspective — Shows what changes when you step outside the frame and see the larger picture.
- Essay 3.2 | Brigadoon — Uses the disappearing village of Brigadoon as a metaphor for events as temporary cities that linger in memory.
- Essay 3.3 | Future-Focused — Reflects on time perspective and why some gatherings orient people toward what comes next.
- Essay 3.4 | Not Always the Answer — A reminder that gatherings are powerful, but not always the right answer in every form or at every dose.
Making It Real
Ideas only matter when they are carried into the world with intention and discipline. The final section turns toward craft, execution, and consequence. These essays examine what it takes to turn aspiration into lived experience—through design, hosting, participation, stewardship, and the choices that make an event not only memorable, but meaningful.
- Essay 4.1 | Steering Committee — Describes the steering committee as the hidden engine of good gatherings, where purpose, tradeoffs, and truth are meant to meet.
- Essay 4.2 | Purpose & People — Explores the moment when “audience” stops being a noun and starts becoming real people with real verbs.
- Essay 4.3 | Casting — Considers why the right person for the room is not always the most senior one, and why casting is a form of care.
- Essay 4.4 | P’s of Purposeful Events — Uses a New Orleans story to show that place should do more than hold an event; it should say something.
- Essay 4.5 | Crafting Stories — Argues that stories in events are not decoration, but responsibility.
- Essay 4.6 | Bright Shiny Objects — Examines how clever ideas and technologies can quickly become distractions if they are not anchored in purpose.
- Essay 4.7 | Proactive & Reactive — Shows how, when things go wrong, the response often becomes the story.
- Essay 4.8 | Scarcity — Looks at how scarcity, used well, can create meaning rather than merely limitation.
- Essay 4.9 | Barnacle Events — Explores the unofficial ecosystems that attach themselves to successful gatherings.
- Essay 4.10 | How Did We Do? — Asks not just whether an event reached people, but whether it enabled anything meaningful to happen.
- Essay 4.11 | Footprints in the Sand — Reflects on what remains after the room empties, and why some gatherings continue long after they end.